Too Exposed

Go back the other way: Calling for a Song

Follow this back to: Forget About Everything

Manueline and Wals plodded up a long winding slope. Manueline gave up any thought of when they would stop or where they were going. The path offered nothing by way of a break that would tempt them to stop, just a long steady climb that ate them up, taking all their attention, fixing them in a rhythm of movement in which they lost themselves.

They came to a peak and started going down but it was not far before they started again on the upward climb. They reached an altitude where it was appreciably colder, with frost still on the ground from the previous night. Again, they came to a peak and Manueline looked back through a break in the trees and saw an enormous view of the country north and west of the river. There, clearly visible on the other side, was the village.

It looked tiny. Manueline had been looking over her shoulder and now she actually stopped and looked, resting her gaze on the world that used to be her home and would never be again. There was no sign of life, no smoke and it was too far off to be able to see individual people. She found herself wondering what they were doing.

She wondered if perhaps they were all dead or left frozen in time by what she had done. She remembered a children's story of a sleeping village. A village that went to sleep because two lovers crept away in the night and put a sleeping spell on the village. They thought the spell just strong enough to keep the village asleep while they got away. They had been given the spell by an old man they met by the road and they had misunderstood his instructions, at least in some versions of the story it was told that way. In other versions they deliberately used far more of the spell than they had been told to, fearing that the village would wake, the spell would not be strong enough. Years later, one of their children returned to try and find their grandparents and instead had found the village still asleep. The people had aged as they slept so everyone in the village was very old, most of them died as soon as they woke up; those that remained cursed the lovers and their descendents.

Manueline stood watching the village wondering if the time would come when they would curse her, if the time had already come. Suddenly she felt immensely tired. She knew they could not stay up on the ridge overlooking the village; not that anyone would see them, just that the weather would be too exposed. She turned back to the path, pulling Wals along with her, hoping the path would lead down into a lower climate that might be kinder to them.

So it proved; the path went down steeply. Manueline was almost afraid that Wals would fall away from her and she had to hold him back as they stumbled down the hill. She felt something lighter about him; as though he were giving her some of his strength instead of just being carried by her. She wasn't sure if it was the steepness of the path or something in Wals himself but there was a difference and she welcomed it, not being sure how she would cope if she had to get Wals up another hill, especially one as steep as the hill they were going down.

Manueline noticed a couple of other paths joining the one they were following. All of them were overgrown, looking as though they had not seen much use lately but had seen a lot of use at one time. They passed a spring, it was not hot but evidently warm and she guessed the water would remain warm and accessible throughout the year even when the deep cold of winter set in.

Slowly Manueline became convinced that they were coming into the realms of the Lady of the Forest; that, as people surmised, she was no longer living in that part of the forest. It stood to reason that she must have had a home of some kind nearby; it was just a matter of finding it.

She did not dare to leave Wals alone and so accepted the need to take him with her, moving slowly to accommodate his weakness. They made their way further down into the valley and a little way up the side of the hill, they found the Lady's house. The door was shut but the latchstring was on the outside. Again, Manueline felt a stirring in Wals as though he recognized something or, perhaps, was even pained by something; Manueline thought it must be a memory of his time behind the door in the fields of the village.

She took him up to the Lady's door and took her arm from round his waist where she had been supporting him along. She took his hand and stepped away from him, reaching out, pulling on the latchstring, feeling the latch lift on the other side. The door swung into the building and Manueline timidly made her way inside, pulling Wals along with her.

To follow this thread in the story go to: Generous House

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